Nickerson Gardens Housing Project

For years, the residents of the Nickerson Gardens housing project in Watts complained about the terrible condition of their streets. "On 115th Street, there was a pothole so big a child could stand in it and you couldn't see him," said Nora King, president of the Nickerson Gardens Resident Management Corp.

One man was shot to death and another injured early Sunday morning in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, police said. At 4:40 a.m., the two men were walking along Success Avenue in the Nickerson Gardens housing project, a Los Angeles police spokesperson said. As the pair crossed 114th Street, a dark colored sedan approached with three men inside. All three in the car opened fire, striking the men several times. One of the victims, a 27-year-old, was shot in the head and was pronounced dead after being transported to a hospital.

In a post-riot initiative directed at some of Los Angeles' poorest residents, officials announced a $3.4-million program Thursday aimed at removing 500 public housing project residents from the welfare rolls by training them as security guards, health care technicians and office workers.

A judge denied a request Friday to reduce the death sentence for a man convicted of murdering two and attempting to murder two others in a South Los Angeles housing project. Defendant Kai Harris, 32, along with another man, was convicted of the 2004 killing of a rival member of his gang in a drug dispute, before turning his gun on three women who witnessed the attack in an apartment. Two of the women survived, but the third, Annette Anderson, 52, considered a pillar of the community, was killed.

Police are trying to determine if there is any connection among the killings of three men within four hours late Tuesday and early Wednesday in the Watts housing projects of Jordan Downs and Nickerson Gardens. The first man slain was 22-year-old DeAndra Turner, who was shot about 9 p.m. Tuesday in the 2100 block of East 99th Place, police said. About 10:45 p.m., 32-year-old Eddie Felton was shot a few blocks away in the 2100 block of East 102nd St.

Nickerson Gardens, the poverty-plagued Watts housing project, is the classic breeding ground for rap music. But when some of the top West Coast rappers held a summit meeting there Tuesday to shoot an anti-gang rap video, they seemed strangely out of place. It wasn't the way most of them dressed--the black T-shirts, caps and jackets sported by the likes of Eazy-E and Tone Loc looked right at home.

A weeklong dispute between several acquaintances at the Nickerson Gardens housing project erupted in gunfire that left a 34-year-old man dead, Los Angeles police reported. Daniel Blakes was killed outside one of the apartment units where one of three men he had been arguing with allegedly fired a shotgun at him, Detective Jeannie Rhodes said. Arrested on suspicion of murder was Frederick Johnson 28. Two other men were being sought.

A second suspect was arrested in an alleged attack on two police officers near the Nickerson Gardens public housing project, police said Tuesday. Donte McDaniel, 24, was arrested during a traffic stop. Police had identified him as an alleged accomplice of Elwood Scott, 28, who was arrested at the scene of the shootings. On Jan. 21, Officers Todd Behrens and Peter Bueno tried to stop a car carrying McDaniel, Scott and a third person for traffic violations.

One man was shot to death and another injured early Sunday morning in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, police said. At 4:40 a.m., the two men were walking along Success Avenue in the Nickerson Gardens housing project, a Los Angeles police spokesperson said. As the pair crossed 114th Street, a dark colored sedan approached with three men inside. All three in the car opened fire, striking the men several times. One of the victims, a 27-year-old, was shot in the head and was pronounced dead after being transported to a hospital.

Rembrandt and Monet might not be household names to many children in the Nickerson Gardens public housing project, but they soon may be more familiar thanks to efforts by some residents at the Park La Brea apartments near the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Thirty families who live at the housing project Thursday were given one-year memberships to the art museum, an idea stemming from a Park La Brea art exhibit and fund-raiser earlier this year.

To those who know it only by reputation, the Nickerson Gardens housing project in Watts is a forbidding place, plagued by violence and poverty and ruled by African American gangs. So naturally, Father Peter Banks brought 200 Latino parishioners there in December for a posada, a Christmas ritual that re-creates Joseph and Mary's search for a place for Jesus to be born. Banks, pastor of St.

A second suspect was arrested in an alleged attack on two police officers near the Nickerson Gardens public housing project, police said Tuesday. Donte McDaniel, 24, was arrested during a traffic stop. Police had identified him as an alleged accomplice of Elwood Scott, 28, who was arrested at the scene of the shootings. On Jan. 21, Officers Todd Behrens and Peter Bueno tried to stop a car carrying McDaniel, Scott and a third person for traffic violations.

They say that many residents who move out of the Nickerson Gardens housing project in South-Central Los Angeles never look back. But there was Joseph Loeb, the 45-year-old founder and president of Break Away Technologies, returning to his childhood stomping grounds to fulfill a mission more than three decades after his family left. Loeb brought a couple of young technology wizards to set up a computer lab at the Sage day care center. Eventually, the computers will be linked to the Internet.

What would Christmas be without snow? About 20 children from Nickerson Gardens, a South-Central Los Angeles housing development, discovered the joy of playing in the white stuff when they were treated Thursday to an afternoon of snowball fights and sledding at Loyola Marymount University in Westchester. Members of Sigma Pi fraternity brought in 20 tons of snow, which was spread over hay bales to create hills and slopes.

One by one, the teenagers slid unobtrusively into the empty seats at the back of the housing project gymnasium, beneath the black crepe streamers that drooped between basketball hoops. When they were satisfied that no one was watching, they sneaked a look at the list they had been handed at the door--the names of the 230 Nickerson Gardens residents who have died from gang shootings and other violence over the past 25 years.

Rembrandt and Monet might not be household names to many children in the Nickerson Gardens public housing project, but they soon may be more familiar thanks to efforts by some residents at the Park La Brea apartments near the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Thirty families who live at the housing project Thursday were given one-year memberships to the art museum, an idea stemming from a Park La Brea art exhibit and fund-raiser earlier this year.

The streaks of wet blood on the kitchen floor of the cramped stucco apartment in Watts bore mute witness Saturday to the fact that life rarely follows a political script. Only two days after Jesse Jackson's high-profile visit to the sprawling Nickerson Gardens housing project, where he appealed for an end to gang violence, Billy Joe Wade, 29, was shot and killed. A neighbor blamed the attack on "jackers" who burst into the apartment and shot Wade in the head when he ordered them to leave.

Crime and the inhumanity of man are oppressive facts of life inside the Nickerson Gardens housing project in South-Central Los Angeles. But heaven help those who mess with the Gardens' garden. Since last November, 38 residents of the project have banded together to nurture vegetable plots on a vacant lot on East 115th Street.

For years, the residents of the Nickerson Gardens housing project in Watts complained about the terrible condition of their streets. "On 115th Street, there was a pothole so big a child could stand in it and you couldn't see him," said Nora King, president of the Nickerson Gardens Resident Management Corp.

The human spirit is a funny thing. The worst can happen, and if you arrange your mind just right, you can almost forget it ever occurred. For half a lifetime, Kimberly Meadows almost forgot--until this week, when it all rushed back: a summer afternoon, a shy girlfriend, a white lace blouse, a sickening loss of innocence. The gang rape that Meadows witnessed as a teenager was not the first in human history. It was just the one that she kept to herself for 14 years.